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Lately I had the chance to listen to a very good talk about Disruptive Innovation by Luke Williams (at Frontiers of Interaction). A lot has been said about innovation lately and this is a ‘flavor’ that deserve to be understood.

Disruptive Innovation is not about finding something ‘new’. We are leaving the information age to go to the creative age due to the high level of uncertainty so Disruptive Innovation is seldom a matter of technology.

We are obsessed, in business, to fix something that’s “broken”. We have learnt to be problem-solving machines: so we often intend innovation as something new that fixe something. With Disruptive Innovation we don’t want to start from what’s broken: we want to start from what’s ALREADY there … that’s often bad products and bad services. And then we want to brake the cliché: break the set of belief that govern the way we do stuff.

This can be done by reversing what everybody thinks it’s true or denying assumptions (or part of them) behind our beliefs.

No matter what technique you use, remember that if an idea doesn’t make you laugh at the beginning, it’s not disruptive enough!

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There’s something smelly about financing IT projects in return for a contracted return on investment. It’s not that there shouldn’t be some expectation about return. There absolutely should. But given the uncertainty and the risk, isn’t financing IT projects more like a funding venture? Isn’t it more about managing risk to achieve reward (the desired outcome or better) rather than managing cost and schedule? If it is, then the question to be asked more often is ‘what types of benefits are we seeing for this round of funding, and does the potential return at this stage warrant additional funding?’ rather than ‘are we on schedule and within budget?’

working in pair you can create what’s called rapport: one of the most important features or characteristics of subconscious communication. It is commonality of perspective: being “in sync” with, or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking. This goes beyond written rules or pre-set methods. As the sync is at the unconscious level, pairing can be unconsciously powerful

Now is this rapportwhat you really want when, for example, you are pairing in a pair programming session? Yes and no

Yes: if this means establishing a trustful and proactive relationship where the fight to achieve an excellent result takes place;

No: if this means not adding to the couple the necessary tension. This tension is the generative sparkle of the relationship. A good example of this deviation in the case of pair programming is what Francesco define with mamma programming where the two are looking for mutual protection and reciprocal approval.

Because Lippi hadn’t invested in fresh talent or new schemes, he found himself in an innovation capability trap. Similarly, organizations can either get employees to work harder or improve how they work by modifying processes and improving capabilities. If they focus solely on the former, productivity will rise and short-term results may improve — but the system will break down at some stage. It’s impossible to deploy new capabilities when you need to if you haven’t already invested in developing them.

OK, the fact the the author of the post is Italian (Alessandro Di Fiore, CEO of the European Centre for Strategic Innovation) may explain something: may be he is a Cassano or Balotelli fan 🙂

Who knows how this post would have been titled if Italy had won the championship: may be ‘Team spirit to boost commitment’, ‘The team wins over turnover’, ‘Never change a winning team’.

So what’s your idea? Trust the winning team or change? Change a little, everything or nothing?